I suggested on Friday something very important and probably very controversial for some of you. I suggested that voluntary abortion exists largely because people do not want to face the consequences for their actions.

Planned Parenthood put out a new annual report for 2016-2017 which I already discussed in my post on January 1, and it seems to me that they might not necessarily want to own up to the consequences of their own actions either. Let me share some numbers with you.

In the 44 page document, Planned Parenthood uses the word “abortion” 18 times. Of course, as part of their euphemistic campaign, they often times blanket abortion under the phrase “reproductive care” or something similar, but here is the fascinating part about the use of the term abortion.

They very rarely mention in their own report that they perform abortions. Part of that of course may be because everyone knows that Planned Parenthood provides abortions, so it really goes without saying. However, let’s take a look at how they use the word abortion.

In the opening letter from Cecile Richards and Naomi Aberly, they do mention in the first paragraph that they provide a variety of services including abortions. Because it is mentioned in basically the introduction to the entire annual report, you might think that they would talk about how great it is that they provide this service and how often they provided. After all, they have a giant graphic on page 7 that highlights all the huge number of services they provide. Abortion is strangely absent.

You might say that maybe because all of these numbers are bigger than the amount of abortions that Planned Parenthood performs, perhaps they were just focusing on where they perform a majority of their services. However, that doesn’t necessarily hold up because immediately prior on page 6, Planned Parenthood talks about their Zika prevention initiatives and transgender hormonal therapy programs. Five Planned Parenthood affiliates were involved in the Zika work, and 17 states have Planned Parenthoods that provide hormonal therapy. Certainly, abortion is a larger part of their business than both of these initiatives, but we don’t see anything about that in these opening pages.

The next mention of abortion comes on page 9 where Planned Parenthood does not say they perform abortions. Rather, they talk about supporting efforts in several of Latin American countries to change abortion law.

Page 10 mentions that abortions are now able to be scheduled online at 26 different affiliates, but that doesn’t really provide very much information for speak very much to the extent to which abortions are provided. However, at least this is an admission that they actually provide them since they need to be scheduled in order to be provided.

On page 14, again, they talk about how unhappy they are about the current administration putting what they call a “gag rule” on organizations providing abortion related services internationally. It is nothing that relates the services Planned Parenthood actually provides.

The next nine mentions of the word abortion and specific references to state legislation that sought to reduce access to that procedure. While this is sort of a nod to the fact that Planned Parenthood provides this procedure given that they are upset about potentially reducing access to it, these mentions feel pretty much like any mentioned from a Democratic think tank that holds a pro-choice position. They simply sound like they support the availability to abortion services rather than provide them.

Finally, we get to some hard data, but even this data is rather deceptive. On page 29, Planned Parenthood states that 3% of its services are abortions. This is shown in the form of a graphic, and finally on page 31, the word abortion is used two times the point that the real truth of the matter.

Finally, the 18th and final use of the word abortion in their annual report refers to the job title of one of their vice presidents Deborah VanDerhei who is the Vice President of Abortion Access.

It fascinates me that Planned Parenthood is very public their support of movements such as Shout Your Abortion, but their own annual report really does not shout out their own experience with the procedure. They mention how they support a right to an abortion many times in various states and foreign countries, but by my own calculations above that you can check yourself by actually reading the report, they very rarely talk about the fact that they provide this service, and they bury how many of them they do near the back of the report.

That tells me something very important about Planned Parenthood. They know what they want to do, and they don’t want to face the consequences of admitting what they actually do.

They talk about how important that right is, but they hide the information about how much they really do it.

If they don’t fundamentally believe there’s anything wrong with what they are doing, why hide it in this way? Why don’t they put that number of abortions front and center? I’m not sure, but is it possible that they don’t want people actually realizing how many lives are lost in these buildings every year? That’s a strong possibility in my mind, but of course that is not a direct quote from Planned Parenthood. Only they can explain the strange presentation of something that apparently no one ought to be ashamed of yet the report shows perhaps some shame.

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